Girl 99

by Andy Jones

  Now, glaring at my reflection in the Old Bull, I am consumed with a notion. I will follow Declan Chambers into these toilets tonight. I’ll wait for him to start pissing, then smash his head into the tiled wall – once, twice – then leave him bleeding and unconscious in a trough full of urine.

  The door opens. I snap my head around towards the sound, and I must look like a psychopath to the old boy who walks in. He nods at me warily, and I have to unclench my jaw so that I can smile back.

  When I collect my drinks from the bar, I tip Chambers’s wife the change from ten pounds.

  ‘Took your time,’ says Bianca. ‘Thought you’d drowned.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I say.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your work experience.’

  Over the past eight years, Mum’s anniversary must have fallen on every day of the week; this year it’s a Sunday and it’s nice that we can all be together.

  I was twenty-two when she died, and had just started working in the job I still do today. I suppose I thought I was pretty grown up at the time, but looking back I was little more than a child. Only a handful of years older than Bianca is now. Dad cried so much at the funeral that it embarrassed me to the point where I wasn’t able to cry myself. It was summer-holiday sunny and I remember Dad’s head getting so sunburned it peeled for the whole week I was home. Mum was thin when she died, her ribs showing at the open neck of her nightie; stark clavicles, sunken cheeks, lost eyes. I was one of the pallbearers, and I remember being surprised by the weight of the coffin that couldn’t have contained more than a wisp of my mother. What I remember of the service was a lot of readings and hymns. They talked about life and death and life everlasting. Heaven. God’s only son dying for our sins. But they didn’t really talk about Mum. Mother, daughter, loving wife, yes; but they never mentioned how funny she was, how she’d blow raspberries on my tummy, dance while she cooked breakfast, sing while she drove.

  The priest told me, squeezing my shoulders, that Mum had gone to a better place.

  In a sense, today is nothing special. Just a regular Sunday Mass, dedicated to Katherine Jane Ferguson, wife of James, mother of Bianca and Thomas. The congregation offers up a silent prayer. And that’s it.

  We stand graveside, holding hands all in a line with Dad in the middle. Today is not as sunny as the first time, but it’s warm and still and quiet. Bianca places flowers on Mum’s already well-tended grave: Katherine Jane Ferguson. Our world is less bright without you.

  She was forty-eight years old.

  I think my mum would have liked Verity, and that makes me sadder than anything else about today.

  Dad has lifted Bianca’s grounding, and after supper and a pleasant but competitive game of Monopoly in the garden, she went round to a friend’s to watch a film and stay overnight. ‘No funny business,’ Dad warned her, but he winked and Bianca hugged him long and hard before she left.

  The Fergusons have all had a bit to drink today, but by nine Dad’s passed out in his armchair and he must have put away close to a pint of whisky. I help him up the stairs, and in the doorway to his room he cries and says he misses my mum every single day.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bianca will be staying with me for four nights, gaining three days’ work experience on the Little Horrors shoot, which now that I think of it is rather fitting. She’s packed enough gear for a month and the Herald is feeling the strain as we haul south down the motorway.

  ‘Didn’t you used to have a Mini?’ asks Bianca.

  ‘Sadie’s got it.’

  Bianca grunts. ‘You never said why you and her broke up.’

  ‘We just weren’t right for each other.’

  ‘Did you cheat on her?’

  I sigh.

  ‘Men are such wankers.’

  ‘Language.’

  Bianca tuts.

  ‘But, yes,’ I say, ‘men are, by and large, wankers.’

  ‘If Perx cheated on me I’d cut his cock off.’

  ‘That’s nice, dear, so how do you think your exams went?’

  Bianca makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a grunt, which could mean anything between wonderful and dreadful.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ she says.

  ‘Well, couldn’t very well have you doing work experience as a lawyer, could we?’

  ‘Nuh-uh. Was a mistake saying I was even interested. Talking of,’ she says, ‘how does it feel to find out you’re an accident, Daffy?’

  ‘Feels awesome. I’m the rebel now. How does it feel to be legit?’

  Bianca shrugs. ‘Same same.’

  ‘You and Dad seem better,’ I say.

  ‘What’s he going to do if I leave home, do you think?’

  ‘I dunno. Same as he is now, I suppose.’

  ‘He’ll be lonely,’ Bianca says, and I feel like a bad son for not considering this myself. ‘And he drinks too much.’

  ‘You sound like his mother,’ I say.

  Bianca laughs. ‘We should fix him up.’

  ‘With a woman?’

  ‘Unless you know something I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t know if he wants fixing up,’ I say.

  Bianca tuts. ‘Everyone wants fixing up.’ And she glances sideways, looking for a reaction.

  ‘Maybe,’ I tell her. ‘Good idea for a website: Date my Dad.’

  ‘Already exists,’ Bea says.

  ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘Not yet. But I probably will.’

  I’m reminded of Phil describing El’s attempts to convince him into dating, and it makes me feel sad and optimistic at the same time.

  ‘I told you I’m seeing El tonight, didn’t I?’

  ‘Your mate that’s . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Yup. I’ll only be a couple of hours. Promise not to smoke any wacky baccy and burn the flat down?’

  ‘Have you got Wi-Fi?’

  ‘It’s London.’

  ‘Might see if I can fix Dad up,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of it about.’

  El’s ankle is bandaged and there’s a crutch balanced beside his chair. He has a red mark on his forehead and the back of his hand is grazed. There’s an awkwardness to the atmosphere and, so far, all anyone’s told me is that El fell. He isn’t nimble on a good day, and today he’s propped up on crutches and heavy painkillers . . . so here we are, eating Lucky Dragon takeaway and drinking mango lassis around El and Phil’s kitchen table. The absence of beer and the presence of Phil are welcome variations to our routine. Lately, it seems that every time I see El, a little more of his disease shows up and a little more of my best friend is left behind. And, love him as much as I do, I was dreading tonight.

  ‘Shagged anyone recently?’ he asks.

  Phil wags his finger. ‘Manners, Laurence.’

  El pokes his tongue out at Phil. ‘’xcuse me, Thomas,’ he articulates camply. ‘Have you had much cunt lately?’

  Phil sighs and continues eating.

  ‘Thomas?’ pursues El. ‘Any cunt, Thomas?’

  Phil looks at me expectantly. It feels like the scrutiny of an authority figure, and I feel suddenly embarrassed. Ashamed.

  ‘Well?’ says El, prodding me with his crutch.

  ‘El,’ chides Phil. ‘Don’t poke the guests.’

  ‘Thomas?’ insists El.

  I hold up one finger.

  El bangs his fist on the table, making the plates jump. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘El,’ says Phil. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘How mny you on now?’

  ‘Ninety-eight,’ I say to the tablecloth.

  ‘Tart,’ says El, and Phil shakes his head.

  I groan into my mango lassi.

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ says Phil. ‘A hundred isn’t so many.’

  ‘No?’ I say. And although I’m sure it isn’t Phil’s intention, I’m ever so slightly – and ever so pathetically – deflated by his lack of awe at my sexual prowess.


  ‘Not in my circle,’ says Phil. ‘No pun intended.’

  ‘Up yr bum,’ says El.

  ‘Quite,’ says Phil, acknowledging El’s reaction with a smile and a little bow. ‘I knew one gentleman,’ he goes on, ‘who threw a party to mark the occasion of his five hundred and first. Everyone, including his latest conquest, wore Levi’s 501s.’

  El laughs and stamps his feet. ‘Who’s ’at?’

  ‘Kevin Thompson.’

  El hums out a short indulgent laugh.

  ‘How many’s he on now?’ I ask.

  ‘Dead,’ says Phil with a sad smile. He articulates the word with a significance that seems to imply both the method and the inevitability of Kevin Thompson’s demise.

  El’s arm twitches sideways, as if he’s swiping at a fly only he can see. Head wobbling on top of his thin neck, he mutters something under his breath – ‘fuckig dead’ it sounds like – and his face is a mask of anger and frustration.

  Phil blows his nose into an ironed handkerchief.

  ‘So, Laurence,’ says Phil, ‘shall I tell Tom about your ankle, or will you?’

  El stuffs a forkful of curry into his mouth.

  On Sunday, Phil went for a meal with Trevor and Michael, a couple he’s been friends with for several years. Also present was Oscar, a friend of Trevor’s – good-looking, recently single. Not exactly a blind date, but not exactly not. Before he left the house, Phil cooked a pan of Bolognese for El. All El had to do was boil the spaghetti.

  El opened a bottle of wine. He decided he didn’t want Bolognese, so he dialled a pizza. Thirty minutes later there was a ring at the doorbell. Fortunately, El was nearer the bottom than the top of the stairs when he tripped. When Phil got home El was passed out in his armchair. He’d finished the bottle of wine and his foot had ballooned and turned purple. Phil skipped concern, worry and panic, flew straight into blind hysteria and called an ambulance. They hobbled out of casualty at something after two in the morning with a ‘disappointing X-ray’, a pair of crutches and a prescription.

  I think Phil blames himself.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Phil says. ‘I don’t blame myself. I’m not that melodramatic—’

  El laughs, throws his hands in the air and screams, ‘Amblance!’

  ‘But,’ Phil continues, ‘the fact remains . . . it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been at home.’

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ I tell him.

  ‘Yeah,’ says El. ‘I might’ve choked on that bsgetti Bolnese.’

  ‘Throttle you myself in a minute,’ says Phil.

  El turns to me. ‘You gonna let him talk t’me like that?’

  ‘So, Phil,’ I ask, ‘how was the meal?’

  He waves a hand in the air. ‘Fine fine.’

  ‘He’s goin to see Oscar again,’ says El.

  ‘I am bloody not. Why do you insist on . . . I’m not, and I never said I was.’

  El laughs. ‘You should.’

  ‘Oh, should I? For all you know, he could be a fat whale with a moustache and body odour.’

  ‘Is he?’ I ask.

  ‘Actually, no. He’s rather handsome. But’ – Phil holds up a finger as El opens his mouth to interrupt – ‘but . . . he’s not my type. Too tall and sophisticated.’

  El blows a raspberry.

  ‘Quite,’ says Phil. ‘And besides, I’m too old for dating. I never enjoyed it first time around. And I’m far less tolerant and way more particular now than I ever was then.’

  ‘Juss haven met the right one,’ says El.

  Phil looks at El and shakes his head. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it, love? I have.’ He uses his little fingers to wipe the tears from the corners of his eyes. ‘I met him five years ago.’

  ‘Fuckig hell,’ says El, shaking his head. ‘I thought you said you wern melodratic.’

  I had imagined that I’d get back to the flat and find Bianca curled up asleep on the sofa. All I find in the living room, however, is an empty pizza box, a greasy plate and a dirty wine glass. Bianca is in the spare room, door closed, talking to someone on her mobile. The words are muffled but I get the intonation, which is alternately argumentative and pleading. I’m guessing Perx.

  ‘Home,’ I say, knocking on her bedroom door.

  Grunt.

  ‘Okay then.’

  I clean up Bianca’s mess and switch on the news.

  Twenty minutes later she’s still in her room, still on the phone.

  I give the door another knock. ‘I’m going to bed in a minute.’

  ‘’kay.’

  I brush my teeth.

  Knock knock. ‘Right, I’m off then . . . Goodnight.’

  ‘’night.’

  ‘Early start tomorrow, okay?’

  ‘Yes, o-kay.’ A little narky.

  ‘I’ll give you a knock at six.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Kids, who’d have ’em?

  Lying in bed, with Bianca snoring lightly in the next room, I think again about the revelation that I was an unplanned baby. All of us are ten-trillion-to-one shots; all of us have a responsibility to make the most of our lucky break. But those of us who snuck past the guards of intent, us rebels on the fringes of design, we have that added pressure to make it count. And I feel it keenly tonight. I’ve wasted too much time already this year, chasing numbers under the pretext of chasing El’s bet. But that’s over now, and when the shoot is over I’m going to make my time count. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but inviting Verity for a glass of wine, a coffee, a meal, a walk in the park, a night at the flicks . . . any of those things would be a good place to start.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  At six fifteen there’s still no sign of life from Bianca’s room, so I’m forced to enter and open the curtains, which is a little awkward because Bianca has changed shape since I changed her nappies – something that is cringingly evident as she eats her Coco Pops in a vest top and short shorts. It used to take Sadie twenty minutes to apply make-up that looked like it wasn’t there. It takes Bianca five minutes to layer on enough black to print a broadsheet newspaper. It’s not an elegant look but it is quick, and we’re out of the door only a few minutes behind schedule.

  Bianca is fantastically excited during the drive to the Tower of London. I try to manage her expectations by explaining that her main job is to ensure everyone has coffee, but her enthusiasm remains undampened. I’m kind of excited too – after all, Verity doesn’t have a boyfriend. We’re taking a second swing at Albert’s Frankenstein today, and if the white-wisped Wedgwood sky is any indication, we won’t be needing the weather insurance.

  After our awkward exchange last Friday, I had expected Verity to be coy this morning, but when I knock on her trailer door she is exactly the opposite.

  ‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Looks like good weather.’

  ‘We might even have to do some work,’ I say. ‘This is my sister, by the way. Bianca. She’s going to help us out for a few days.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Bianca. Pretty name.’

  ‘Thanks. Mum was an English teacher.’

  I see a minuscule reaction on Verity’s face – a tightening at the corners of her eyes, maybe – at the word was. ‘Not after whatsit from EastEnders, then?’

  Bianca laughs. ‘Well, I get that a lot. Obviously. But it’s from The Taming of the Shrew. Bianca Minola was – at the end – sort of a late arrival. Like me. And not just cos Mum and Dad were . . . you know, knocking on. Mum was in labour forty-seven hours.’

  ‘Been trouble ever since,’ I say.

  Verity runs a hand through a lock of Bianca’s blue-streaked hair. ‘Maybe I’ll go blue too.’

  Bianca glances at me.

  ‘First things first,’ I tell her. ‘Go see if you can find your brother a cup of coffee. Verity?’

  Verity shakes her head. ‘Just put one out.’

  Bianca looks hesitant.

  ‘Don’t be shy,’ I tell her. ‘Anyone bothers you, tell them you’re my sister
.’

  Bianca goes in search of coffee and Verity begins unpacking a box full of props. ‘So, what do you fancy? Fangs, pointy ears, wart?’

  She’s wearing skinny blue jeans today that show off the shape of her legs – runner’s legs maybe, or yoga; whatever it is, it works – and a Pixies T-shirt that finishes maybe half an inch above her leather belt.

  ‘How about stitches around my neck?’

  ‘I have just the thing,’ says Verity. ‘I like the new hair by the way.’

  ‘Well, it’s not what I asked for. How was the barbie?’

  ‘Yeah, it was good. Stayed mostly dry, didn’t burn anything, drank too much.’

  ‘Sounds like a success.’

  Verity produces a strip of precast latex stitches. ‘Here’s one I prepared earlier,’ she says, leaning in to measure the strip around my neck.

  Close up, I notice that the tips of her dark eyelashes – thick, dark brown – are in fact very pale blonde, and longer than they appear at first glance.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ she asks.

  I’d anticipated this, but the question still wrong-foots me.

  ‘It was the anniversary of my mum’s . . . nine years ago . . . she died nine years ago.’

  Verity steps back to look at me, her brow creased with concern.

  I smile. ‘It was a nice day. We had a nice weekend.’

  Verity returns my smile, continues gluing the stitches to my neck, and her hair is soft against my face.

  ‘I feel bad,’ she says. ‘For putting you on the spot on Friday.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You know, the barbecue?’

  She’s moved behind me now, and I feel emboldened by the pseudo-anonymity. ‘I’m glad you asked me,’ I say. ‘I wish I could have made it.’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ says Verity.

  I turn around to face her. ‘Definitely next time.’

  By the time Albert arrives on set, I’m fully stitched up, Verity has a gash on her cheek, and Bianca is sporting evil eyebrows and a nose wart. Ben gets a bullet wound between the eyes, Kaz gets fangs – they suit her.

  I introduce Bianca to the crew, and at least half of them affect a cockney accent and shout ‘Rickeeeeeey!’

  And despite the well-practised sigh-and-eye-roll combination, I think Bianca is enjoying the attention.